


the invisible people

by sorrymom



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, NOT a bakery au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26986492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrymom/pseuds/sorrymom
Summary: Mina thinks maybe if they were friends she’d be able to gently scold Momo, but the silence holds taut in this unnameable not-hour where no one is driving and the insomniacs don’t know they’re asleep.
Relationships: Hirai Momo/Myoui Mina
Comments: 11
Kudos: 136
Collections: #GGFLASHFIC





	the invisible people

Mina’s alarm is set for 1:00am. 

She eats leftovers for breakfast, standing beside the light Sana leaves on in the kitchen. Her coffee is black and bitter, burning her awake. 

Because it is so dark out, because the skyscrapers are ashen wicks, because it is artificially bright in the empty subway car— the windows are like mirrors. Mina looks down at her phone, refreshing nothing and nothing and nothing. 

Most nights she doesn’t see anyone when she walks to the bakery. Sometimes stray cats dart between streetlamps into the curtain of shadows. Sometimes a taxi will wander slow through the streets, the man inside raising his hand in the awkward greeting of people who didn’t anticipate being seen. 

She waits outside the locked door of the bakery until Momo comes on her bike. She never wears her helmet. 

Mina thinks maybe if they were friends she’d be able to gently scold Momo. But the silence holds taut in this unnameable not-hour where all the insomniacs don’t know they’re asleep. 

Momo turns the lights on in the kitchen. They preheat the ovens. They tie aprons around their waists. 

===

On her first day of work Mina was overdressed in a sky blue blouse, a freshly printed resume in her hands. Momo had bowed quickly, almost embarrassed, and then said, “I don’t need that.” 

And it’s true. Nothing on that piece of paper said Mina knew how to mix flour and water and yeast and make something halfway alive. Because she didn’t. 

Momo had found an extra t-shirt in the back closet and tossed it to her. 

===

“It’s just.” Sana is opening cabinet after cabinet, interrupting herself with each slam. “Something to do. To tide you over. Keep you busy.” 

Sana thinks living is like swimming. It’s easier to float if you’re moving. 

Mina doesn’t want to say ‘I can do better than a baker’s shop.’ But it’s true. It’s supposed to be true. She should be in one of those Tokyo high-rises right now, making so much money she could feel guilty. Everyone is supposed to be proud of her. Not this pity. Not Sana’s spare bedroom. 

“And Momo is sweet,” Sana says, finally locating the corkscrew. “And the pay isn’t bad.”

An hour later Mina is hazy, hot-cheeked tipsy and Sana is giggling helplessly at commercials on TV. 

===

For the first two months the only words Momo says to her are _behind_ , _hot_ , _corner_ , and _sharp_. Warnings. Their elbows never bump. Their flour-chalked hands never touch. 

Momo keeps an ear-bud in, the other tucked under her oversized t-shirt. Sometimes she hums. 

Mina wears one of Sana’s black baseball caps. Between the heat of the ovens and the embarrassment of mixing up different types of flour she usually sweats through her shirt. 

Sometimes Momo opens up the industrial fridge and there is a cool breath against Mina’s ankles. 

===

The t-shirt Momo gave her is screenprinted with Hokusai’s Fine Wind, Clear Morning. A blister red Mt. Fuji. Stripes of white cloud. She hasn’t given it back and Momo hasn’t asked.

===

Mina’s hands and wrists ache when she gets home. By that time, Sana has already left for work. There are dishes in the sink, pajamas draped over the couch. 

There isn’t much time for Mina’s mind to wander when she’s at the baker’s shop. It all hits when she walks back into this apartment that isn’t her’s, when she washes herself with soap she didn’t pick out at the store. 

Sana would want to know. Sana would stock the fridge with her favorite yogurt and be quieter when she shuts doors. 

But it’s most natural for Mina to make herself small and grateful and unneeding.

She runs a bath in the cramped tub. There are cracks in the tile, shapes that Mina stares at until the water cools around her.

===

Something changes in the fall. The air is clearer. Momo says ‘good morning’ when her bike winces to a halt in front of the shop. 

“Good morning,” Mina half-whispers, her voice torn with bad sleep and too-hot coffee. 

Momo smiles. 

===

“Don’t burn yourself” instead of “hot.” 

“Coming around” instead of “corner.” 

“Sorry” instead of “behind.” 

“Careful” instead of “sharp.” 

===

Something changes in the fall. The air is clearer. Momo brings a boombox and sets it up on the marble countertop. They listen to modal jazz and the sun rises later. 

“I like this part,” Momo will say, her shoes tapping against the concrete. Sometimes she’ll sing too. She has a lullaby voice. 

===

Something changes in the fall. Something innocent. 

When Mina is in her not-bedroom, a sleep mask over her eyes because no matter what mid-morning light comes through the curtains— when Mina has taken a sleeping pill and melatonin starts to guide her down dark alleys, she thinks of Momo. 

Momo in a bedroom on the other side of the city sleeping against the light and the noise too. 

It would be nice to hear someone breathing beside her. The weight of an arm over her waist. Skin to skin. 

===

Momo has a girlfriend. 

Sana calls her imaginary, but that’s Sana-speak for ‘long-distance.’ ‘On and off.’ ‘Complicated.’ 

Her name is Nayeon and a picture of her is Momo’s lock screen, bundled up in a sweater across a coffee shop table. 

She calls when they get off work, and Momo’s face changes— sometimes elated, a smiling sigh. Sometimes her jaw sets, her voice low when she says hello in a different language.

===

“I used to dance,” Mina says one night. It’s another thing she failed at, but she doesn’t mind Momo knowing. At worst she’ll be polite. 

“You can still dance.” One of Momo’s earbuds hangs down in front of her loose t-shirt, a pendulum over the mess of flour on the cutting board. 

Mina glances at the timer on the oven. Ten minutes. “It was ballet.” 

“Ah. I guess that’s different.”

“I—“ Mina presses the heel of her hand against the dough. Folds it. Then again. “It was weird, growing up around mirrors. I think most kids don’t spend so much time looking at themselves.” 

“It’s probably bad.” Momo stiffens. “Not— I didn’t mean you. But it can be bad to look too much.” 

The conversation is lost like a penny in a fountain. 

===

Mina occasionally catches her reflection in the dishwater. Sometimes in the stainless steel of the refrigerator door. 

===

Mina allotts herself one attempt per night. 

Right now: “So is this what you wanted to be?” 

Momo is messing with the timer pinned to her apron. 

“A baker,” Mina clarifies. 

“Um. Not really.” 

A new song starts on the boombox. 

“But someone has to do it, right?” 

Mina thinks of the subway conductors, opening the doors for empty stations. The people who spread salt on the sidewalks in winter. Sana’s dishes in the sink. All the invisible people doing their secret work. 

“You know,” Mina says as piano tones fall like raindrops in the kitchen, “I’ve never actually had any of your bread.” 

When the sun rises, they sit on one of the concrete slabs in the loading dock out back. Momo pulls apart a loaf in her hands. It’s still warm. Momo’s phone buzzes in her pocket. 

===

It isn’t easy to be nocturnal and job hunt. 

She still gets emails with links from her parents and old professors and college friends. ‘This looks promising!’ ‘I know the hiring director, I’ll put in a word.’ ‘Worth a shot…’ 

But Mina eats leftovers from the fridge. Brews her shitty coffee. Takes the subway into town.

Momo comes, on her bike, her helmet buckled around the handlebars. 

===

The air gets colder and Mina knits a hat for Sana. Something she can pull down over her ears. 

Sana bear hugs her when she gets it. 

“It’s not much,” Mina says, relaxing in Sana’s arms. “But— I’ll thank you better when I—“ 

Sana kisses her square on the mouth. 

It’s quick. The wingbeat of a bird. Barely there. 

“Oh.” 

Sana smiles and as much as her eyes are glowing there’s no desire there. Just that desert of friendly affection. 

“Oh,” Mina says again. 

“Thank you,” Sana sings. 

===

The next time she takes a bath Mina wipes away at the fog on the mirror. 

She used to be so familiar with her reflection. Always as a way to correct herself. In ballet classes, arch her back better. Point her feet right. Lift her chin. She trained her face for a placid sort of ease even as her muscles strained and her ankles ached. 

Even now, she looks happy in the mirror. Or at least calm. 

===

She makes a scarf for Momo too. 

It sits in her backpack for weeks. They aren’t really friends.

===

One night Momo is grinning next to the boombox. 

It’s not jazz. Not trumpets and saxophones and a hi-hat. 

It’s an oboe. Those french horns. The clarinet.The beginning of Swan Lake. The music that plays in the theatre when the blood red curtain is still closed, audience thumbing through their programs. 

“No,” Mina whines. 

“Just to listen!”

The full thing takes nearly three hours to get through. 

“I like this part,” Mina will announce, intermittently, when she can feel the dance moving like a ghost through her body. “You know, Tchaikovsky was ashamed of Swan Lake. He thought ballet suites were beneath him, and he wrote Swan Lake, and then he listened to others. That’s when he realized all his mistakes.” 

“But people know Swan Lake. And the Nutcracker and that Disney movie used the waltz from Sleeping Beauty. Doesn’t it mean more if you accidentally make something people like?” 

“I don’t think,” Mina says, kneading the dough, “that artists care about that. Or the good ones don’t.” 

Momo hums. She doesn’t seem to know the music all that well, her melodies splintering off from the chorus of violins. “Does that mean I shouldn’t like it?” 

“No,” Mina says automatically. “I’m glad you do.” 

===

“You know I love having you here,” Sana is saying. “You could stay forever. But you aren’t happy, are you, Mi-tan? And—“ Here she touches Mina’s knee. It’s so tentative, so unlike her friend. “I want you to have everything you want.” 

===

Mina dips a teaspoon into the white paper sack of yeast, pours the grains into a mug of warm water. 

In ten minutes the yeast will begin to bubble and froth, spilling down the sides. 

This is how you tell if it’s alive.

===

Winter brittles and breaks into spring. 

Something changes. 

Momo doesn’t bother to say when she’s behind, at the corner, when she’s holding something hot or sharp. Mina feels it. There’s a tight rhythm in the kitchen— times and ovens, dough proving and rolled out and they move from counter to counter in an efficient dance. 

But they drift more, in the mornings, in the back of the shop where they split a shared loaf between their hands. 

“I still have your t-shirt,” Mina says one day. 

Momo chews. 

“From the—“

“First day.” 

“Yeah.” 

“It’s funny because when I first saw you I thought— well, I didn’t think you’d come back.” 

“I thought about it,” Mina admits. She had gone home to Sana and said ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ Meaning ‘I don’t want to do this.’ 

“Why did you?” 

“I needed to bring back the shirt.” 

Momo smiles. The morning light is like butter. “So that’s how I’ll know when you quit.” 

That’s when she gives Momo the scarf. She says ‘thank you’ and bows her head. They do not kiss.

===

They listen to other ballets. All of Tchaikovsky’s, then the ones he wished he had written. 

“I don’t think they’re that much better,” Momo remarks, fussing with the baguettes. 

“You have to see it.” 

“We should go. Right before work.” 

Mina thinks of it often now. Momo in a dress— would she wear a dress? Tucked in the seats of the theatre in that wildflower field of faces. And then the music would end and the clapping would end and everyone would go home except for them. They’d ride through the city on Momo’s bike, and come here. 

“That would be nice,” Mina says, hopefully not sounding hopeful. 

===

Mina doesn’t put the Fine Wind, Clear Morning t-shirt on. It had been folded on the armchair now for months. The smell of Sana’s laundry detergent had faded. 

To make his prints, Hokusai carved into a block of wood. Then painted it. Then pressed it to paper. 

The Great Wave is an emoji. Sometimes Sana sends it and Mina doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean. 

“Would you say,” Momo asks one night, “Hokusai knew that was the one? Like would he be proudest of the wave?” 

Hokusai said that nothing he did before the age of seventy-three was worthy of attention. And that, if he reached one hundred and forty, maybe every dot and stroke could be alive. 

===

Sometimes Mina gets this thought like a mantra:

It would be easier if someone loved me. 

Which is selfish, because Sana does, in her way. The people she hasn’t talked to, hasn’t emailed back, do. In their way. 

But she wants the hand under her shirt love.

===

“Unnie and I broke up,” Momo murmurs one night. Stravinsky is spitting like flames from the boombox on the counter. 

“Ah.” Mina tries to realign the tracks of her mind. Somewhere not heading toward joy. “I’m sorry.” 

===

“Maybe it’ll stick this time,” Sana says when Mina reports this latest development to her. 

“Is there something— is Nayeon a good person?” 

“I’m sure she is. But Momo deserves someone closer, don’t you think?” 

===

Tchaikovsky. 

You can do better. The friend who gives you a bed and a bathtub and kisses on the cheek isn’t always ultimate love. 

It might not be Momo either. 

That doesn’t stop Mina from thinking one day they could be invisible together, riding the subway car through the unwatched hours, making something halfway alive.

===

“I got us tickets,” Momo says during a pas de deux. It’s been two months since the break-up. Her phone lock screen is a picture of a dog. Mina isn’t sure if it’s Momo’s. “If you still wanna go.” 

===

On stage the sea becomes a boy. 

“The Great Wave,” Momo mutters in her ear. Her breath smells like bubblegum and her hair smells not at all like Sana’s shampoo. 

Mina leans against her shoulder. Their hands link after intermission, and they only detach to stand and clap as the dancers bow. 

===

Mina is too giddy to sleep after work. She wears the t-shirt and rolls around in bed. She opens the curtains. 

Fine Wind, Clear Morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> ok so i actually do have notes 
> 
> \- the sea becomes a boy is basically an image from M, a ballet about yukio mishima that will be playing in tokyo next weekend:D 
> 
> \- i did paraphrase a quote from hokusai about his work 
> 
> \- tchaikovsky hated swan lake but i like it 
> 
> \- i know the mina ballerina thing has been beaten to death but i thought i had some new things to say!


End file.
